Xenofreak Nation (30 page)

She rushed from one piece of equipment to another, selecting something long and heavy—she didn’t know its function—and unplugging it. She climbed up on the desk, ducking down because the ceiling was so low. The nail-pops indicated where the two-by-four stud was, so she aimed for a spot a few inches away. The first blow barely made a dent and she worried the material used to construct the ceiling was tougher than she thought. After a half dozen more hits, though, she’d knocked out a hole as big as her fist. She dropped the makeshift sledgehammer and put her hand through the hole up to her elbow, thrilled when she encountered nothing in the space beyond the ceiling. She reached up with her other hand and curled her fingers around the edge. It was a simple matter of hanging her body weight from the sheetrock to break a large piece off. In less than a minute, she’d made a hole big enough to fit her body through.

She stuck her head inside and saw the control room framework, silver air ducts, pipes and wiring. Above that was concrete; beyond was nothing but black, but that didn’t stop her from climbing up and crawling along the studs. The light from the control room faded the farther she got. Soon, she felt ahead of her and encountered something different. Instead of two-by-fours, the ceiling consisted of thin metal bars holding up panels. She sat on the last stud and kicked easily through the nearest panel. It fell to the ground, but the space below was black. Bryn turned onto her belly and dropped down, hanging by her hands and swinging before letting go. It was a short drop to the ground. She touched around her: shelves with mystery items on them. She felt her way around the perimeter of the place until her hand encountered a light switch. It was a storage room.

When the door handle turned under her hand with no resistance, she nearly cried aloud in relief.

Chapter Fifty-four

Scott expected a crowd of people to be waiting at the tunnel entrance, but the only one there was Padme. She was standing between a plain door and the caged panda.

“What happened to you?” she asked Dundee.

“I need to see the doc,” he muttered.

“Can you see…at all?” She waved a hand in front of his face. Dundee kept his eyes closed, leaned against the wall and didn’t answer.

“Oh, look!” Nicola said, leaning down to look at the panda. Someone must have sedated the animal, because it was lying on its side, face mashed against the mesh of the cage.

“It won’t fit,” Padme said. “The tunnel is too narrow for the cage. I let the others go ahead while I figure out how to get the panda out.”

Dundee slid down the wall in a heap, but turned his face up when Scott asked, “Did Bryn get out?”

Padme nodded. “Everyone is accounted for, all the patients and staff, except two of the men, Lupus and Dr. Fournier.”

Nicola gasped. “Where’s my dad?”

“I spoke to him a few minutes ago. He is on his way.”

“Lupus’ men are dead,” Scott said. “The ARA are roaming the corridors.”

“All of you must go,” Padme said. “In minutes, incendiary devices throughout the facility will be ignited.”

“Did they get all the other animals out?” Nicola asked. Padme nodded again, but Scott knew this time it was a lie. It made him sick to think of all the bioengineered animals burning to death. If he could, he’d save them all, down to the smallest creature. But at least Bryn was okay; and Scott had been charged with Nicola’s safety. He set the jar he’d been carrying down, noting that it was labeled ‘Grease,’ the chemical that burned cool fire. It seemed like forever since he’d been living up above in the Warehouse among the xenos, fighting his way into their good graces. His mission, to find the facility, had been accomplished. All he had to do now was wait for Fournier at the safe end of the tunnel and he could bring the Bestia Butcher to justice.

He urged a protesting Dundee to his feet as Padme opened the door. Inside was a broom closet. He wasn’t surprised when Padme kicked the bottom corner of the back wall and a secret door opened. Mouse had been right: Fournier had tunnels in all his buildings.

Nicola took her birdcage in one hand and helped Dundee into the tunnel with the other, saying, “You poor man. Daddy will fix you up soon.”

Scott started to follow, but Padme stopped him and said softly, “I meant what I said. When we get topside, will you help me cut a deal?”

“You know I’ll do what I can.”

He looked over her head and saw Lupus just as she placed her hand on his cheek. It must have looked like a lover’s caress to Lupus, because anger narrowed his eyes to threatening slits. He didn’t act on it, however, because he wasn’t alone. Kareem Williams held Lupus, and now Scott and Padme as well, at gunpoint.

Chapter Fifty-five

All the corridors looked alike. Bryn tried to remember from the monitors where she might be, but she hadn’t gotten a good idea of the floor plan even from the control room. Everywhere she turned she saw evidence of the fight between the ARA and the xenos. There were bullet-holes and blown out walls and…dead men. She ran down each corridor and stopped before she got to each intersection to look and make sure she wasn’t about to run into anyone. The place seemed deserted. She couldn’t go out the way she came, so her only hope was to find the escape tunnel and hope it was still open.

She reached a corner with an official-looking wooden door and tried the handle. It didn’t turn, but whoever had come through it last hadn’t shut it properly and it opened. Inside was a typical reception area. She heard a noise further in, behind another door. Was this where the tunnel was? The clock was ticking; she didn’t have time to dawdle in uncertainty. She ran through the reception area and the empty office beyond. The rooms ended in what she instantly recognized as the bedroom of Dr. Fournier. There was no mistaking the shelves full of preserved body parts, lovingly displayed and lighted like precious works of art.

Bryn put the back of her hand to her mouth and looked away. The noise she’d heard was clearer now—an angry shout for help coming from what looked like a closet. She hurried over and looked in; a secret door at the back of the closet gaped ajar. The tunnel went straight down a set of metal stairs. Somewhere below, a light appeared, disappeared and appeared again.

“Padme!” A man yelled. “Lupus!”

The cry for help wasn’t the motivating factor that spurred Bryn to take the vertical stairs two at a time; this was the escape tunnel, and she was thrilled to have found it. The walls were damp and close. At the bottom she had to duck down, just like at Bluto’s, only here, the dirt walls weren’t reinforced with concrete, they were shored up with the occasional wooden four-by-four. After walking only ten feet, she saw the problem: a cave-in had trapped someone. The grenade explosions must have made the dirt walls unstable. Out of a pile of rocks and earth protruded a head and shoulder. The man waved the flashlight in his one free hand and shouted, “Help!”

“I’m here,” Bryn said.

The man tilted the flashlight in her direction and tried to look over his shoulder at her. Even filthy and badly lit, Bryn recognized him. She’d seen Dr. Fournier’s holograph enough times during her recovery to know him anywhere.

“Get me out of here!” he bellowed.

She started to mindlessly obey, but stopped. “No. Maybe this is a fitting end for you.”

“Who is that?”

“Someone who hates you with all her heart.”

“Well, I guess we’ll die together then,” he said. “Because you won’t be getting out any other way.”

Bryn bit her lip. He had a very valid point. There wasn’t enough room for her to crawl along the pile of rubble and over his head, even if he didn’t grab hold of her to prevent her leaving. She would have to help him, but there was one thing she could get out of him in exchange first: information.

In all the fantasies she’d had about confronting him, her main concern had been to find out why he’d ruined her life. She thought about asking him ‘why?’ now and realized the point was moot. His motivation, however complex and revealing, was unimportant. He was a screwed up individual who liked to hurt people, period.

She thought about clarifying her father’s role in all of this, but knew that too, was unimportant. He and Fournier obviously had history. They schemed together to do this for their own, possibly very different, reasons. If she got out of this alive, she wanted to give Scott something back for all he’d done for her. She wanted to make her part in this insanity mean something.

“Tell me about the pandemic,” she said.

“Who is that?”

“It’s Bryn Vega.”

“No kidding?” he craned his neck in an attempt to see her again. “How the hell did you get here?”

“You want to waste time discussing the details or do you want to tell me the truth so I can rescue you?”

“Your dad told you, I assume? What did he leave out?”

“All he said was he did this to me to protect me.”

“Right, well, that was one of the reasons. Um, okay, it’s simple really. Your father was the one who first noticed that your mom never got sick after she got the pig heart.”

“You were her surgeon?” It should have occurred to her long ago.

“Of course. Don’t you remember?”

“No.” She’d been a kid at the time. The doctors talked to her dad and her dad told her what was happening. She hadn’t had any interaction with the surgical team.

“Well, yes, I was. I investigated your father’s concerns and discovered Miranda’s xeno heart somehow activated her immune system against normal human ailments both viral and bacterial. I still don’t know exactly how.”

He was talking fast. The tunnel air was moist and cold enough to make her shiver even in her jacket.

He said, “One of my xenos went to South America and came back carrying typhoid. I don’t know whether the bacteria he brought back was already mutated or if it somehow mutated after he’d contracted it, but yes, I do have a strain in my possession that has the potential to devastate humanity if it got out. There—is that what you wanted to know?”

A groaning noise from a wooden beam over his head alerted her to the fact that the walls and ceiling were still unstable. She began digging. He set the flashlight down so it shone in his direction and helped with his free hand as best he could. Bryn concentrated on his left shoulder in order to dig out his other arm. The wooden beam groaned again. She picked up the flashlight and stepped back, shining it above Fournier’s head. With a suddenness that shocked her, the beam snapped. Earth from above forced it down so quickly she barely had time to jump away, and even so, her legs were buried up to her knees.

The air was clogged with dust. She coughed and kicked her legs free. When she shined the flashlight on the pile of debris, she didn’t see Fournier at first. Then she saw his hand, clenching and unclenching.

He was still alive. And more importantly, the tunnel was still open. She swallowed her panic and climbed up the pile, digging frantically. She concentrated on the place where she’d last seen his head, the place now occupied by a shattered support beam. Luckily, the dirt was loose enough that she dug his face free within a few seconds. He gasped for breath in the murky air. The flashlight revealed a deep gash across his forehead. The dirt on his face had become bloody mud.

“Forget me,” he said. “Get out!”

She hated this man with every cell in her body. Still, tears fell. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, looking through the narrow hole that led to the intact tunnel beyond him; the way to freedom.

“Bryn.” His voice was weak. “Your mother would be proud.”

It was quite possibly the last thing she expected to hear coming from the Bestia Butcher.

“Tell your father…tell him Nicola is not for him. I made her for me.” He was whispering now. “But she was never Miranda.”

Bryn had no idea what he was talking about. She would have to crawl over his head to get out, and as repugnant as she found the idea, she would do it to survive. But the tunnel wasn’t done collapsing. Clumps of dirt began to rain down on her and she was forced to back away again, toward the ladder. In one big rumble, the right wall completely gave way. Bryn climbed the ladder to the top, knowing she couldn’t help him now. She stumbled out of the closet, horrified that she’d witnessed Fournier’s death, and scared witless now that the tunnel was gone.

She’d have to risk the elevator. She started for the door to Fournier’s office, but just then, the power went out.

“Great,” she said, recalling Lupus’ words, “When the power goes out, you better be at the tunnel.”

She still had the flashlight, and by its light she crept past the grisly display of body parts, aware of a strange new sound coming from all around, sort of a whooshing. She went by the bed and tripped over something on the floor. In reaching out to steady herself, she knocked into a podium with one of the jars on it. It began to fall and instinctively, she caught it.

The flashlight illuminated the contents briefly. “Gross,” she muttered, recognizing a heart when she saw one, but the label on the jar stopped her cold.

Miranda Vega.

Fournier had kept her mother’s heart.

She set the jar back on the pedestal, mouth working with no sound coming out until finally: “Oh, Mom.”